[R-1051] activity

Wed Mar 8 09:10:19 EST 2017

The Harris RF-590 or its military counterpart the R-2368 did replace the R-1051 family in the Navy but the general Dynamics design lived on in Army ground radios in the GRC-106 up until the early nineties, maybe around the same time that the last of the R-1051G series receivers were being produced. The General Dynamics design dominated for maybe a good twenty years so that’s not a bad record.
I have owned several 1051 receivers over the years with the last one being a H or G series and always had lots of fun with them but have yet to own a Harris 590, had the opportunity to look at them but not going to get one until I can put together some form of deal that won't cost a king's ransom. Know where there is one in real bad shape and may collect it up but somehow recall that anytime you start with a radio that’s been used to support others and is considered a parts set its almost impossible to get it to work correctly and be reliable.
Do have a couple of GRC-106 sets including my self-propelled GRC-106 in my M151 and have lots of fun with that.  YouTube video of the 106 in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K4Q-rpICqQ

Have an option to pick up a R-1051G along with a URT-23 but don’t know if I have the floor space to accommodate all that stuff in the shop however tempting it is to get back into the big gray Navy line again.
But long story short it looks like Harris has displaced General Dynamics as the king of HF/SSB radios as far as the military is concerned.

Ray F/KA3EKH

-----Original Message-----
From: R-1051 [mailto:r-1051-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of W2HX
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 6:02 PM
To: R-1051 Discussion Group <r-1051 at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [R-1051] activity

I think the successor to the 1051 was the Harris RF-590 (and the R-2368 version of fit). But I could be wrong

-----Original Message-----
From: R-1051 [mailto:r-1051-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Guido Santacana
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2017 5:35 PM
To: R-1051 Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [R-1051] activity

Well, the R1051 was a hybrid of the 60s and apparently even used in the first nuclear submarine Nautilus. My son visited the venerable sub and sent me an image of the radio room showing the R1051. Mine has been in the shack for 15 years requiring only a minor bridge rectifier repair of the 28VDC supply. It gets a weekly exercise and works well except for the 28VDC lamps. Did General Dynamics ever came up with a follow up of this set?

Best 73s

Guido

G. Santacana KP4FAR

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 1:00 PM, Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu> wrote:

> Being that no one else is writing anything thought I would take the 
> opportunity to use up some bandwidth and talk about the wonder of 
> General Dynamics and the whole family of radios that includes the 
> R-1051, RT-618,
> T- 827(URT-23) and there evil ground base cousins the AN/GRC-106 I put 
> all these radios in the same class being they all are hybrids,  all of 
> them use a couple tubes in the rotating turret and rely on the turret 
> technology to provide the necessary image rejection and unwanted 
> spurious products that first generation synthesized sets produced. As 
> far as I know that’s the majority of 1 MHz rotary turrets sets that I 
> know of. I have seen similar ideas in ITT Mackey and Sunair but they 
> are a bit newer being all solid state and rely on tons of miniature 
> reed relays to select the 1MHz band pass filters and don’t use the 
> turret. The older and more costly turret wins out in my mind and for 
> that reason those radios are somewhat special to me. Just as a side 
> note let me point out the Harris URC-94 or RF-280 that’s something 
> like all the Sunair and other stuff but instead of a bunch of bandpass 
> filters and relays they have a signal section with a manual tuned 
> bandpass filter that takes the place of the turret or the filter board 
> with all its relays. Great stuff, think the Big heavy Harris is one my 
> favorite sets just because the way they got around this spurious and 
> image problem but wonder how many Navy personal were befuddled by the process of having to push “TUNE” and peak for maximum reading?
> The sixties, seventies and eighties were truly a peak of engineering 
> design and implementation of new and sometimes unique concepts, not 
> like that old WW2 crap that was used in the command sets that other 
> reflectors keep going on about.
> But enough about all that, is there a point to my email? Well maybe not.
> Let me say something about the 5 MHz reference oscillator assembly for 
> the
> GRC-106 that for some unknown reason I have been seeing them fail a lot.
> For those of you following along at home that’s the 1A3 Frequency 
> Reference Module. The crystal oscillator is a simple two transistor 
> circuit but no matter what I do it is beyond my capability to repair 
> one of those little bastards. Tried changing capacitors, transistors 
> and everything else but find that if I can’t get them to oscillate 
> they just won’t osculate no matter what I do. Gone so far as to gut 
> the oscillator section and build a replacement oscillator or use an sealed 5 MHz time base to replace them.
> The worst thing of all is that I got a 1A3 assembly that was NOS, 
> never opened and it had the same failure where the oscillator would 
> occasionally not start. That’s the problem is they won’t always start 
> but then if you touch the tuning capacitor or just do a reading with a 
> meter the dam things start up and run again or you will do some 
> changes and testing the assembly outside the radio it will work but 
> when you get it all back together and after seeing it work on the 
> bench a week or so later when you go to use the radio it won’t 
> oscillate! The weird this is I have seen this on a couple
> RT-662 and RT-834 exciters-receivers but as far as I know have never 
> had an issue with the Navy time base in the R-1051.
> Well that’s enough of my rant for now, let’s see if any of you other 
> people can write.
>
> Ray F/KA3EKH
>
>
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